New Work in Progress painting Trotting horse in Grassy Field

Recently I've discovered a new painting surface board to try, the Ampersand brand Aquabord. This product is a clayboard that's textured for watercolors, and can be displayed without glass in the frame. I actually haven't painted on it yet, so I'm starting with the small size (5"x7") to get a feel for how it's going to be to paint on.

For these small paintings, I wanted to keep the composition pretty simple, after all this is a first try on the Aquabord. Two ideas came to mind, a horse in a field and a horse jumping a creek/ditch in a southwest landscape. Off I go to the reference pic library on WetCanvas (where artists can use volunteered pics with permission for painting references). There are hundreds of pics to go through but it wasn't long until I found the first reference pic, a beautiful composition of a trotting horse in a golden grassy field in front of woods.

When I start a painting I like to do a little homework first. One of the first things I do is work out a tonal sketch in pencils. Keeping things simple, my mantra, I work out the darks, lights and medium tones in the composition with 2B, 4B and 8B pencils. All I do for this is just print out the pic on my printer and trace the outline on sketch paper. Sketch size is 7"x7" approx. I did not want the fenceline in the painting so I left it out.

Once that is done, I'm then ready to do a simple color sketch, which helps me to see what colors to start the first color layer with. This way I can get a "sneak peek" when the painting will go and how to start the tweaking process. The color palette I used was treeline: Indigo, May green, Olive green (derwent brand), pea green (cretacolor), dark pthalo green (faber castell), tree trunks are in sepia (derwent): horse in french grey (prismacolor)(I left the horse in neutral color on purpose): grassy field and shadows: ivory (cretacolor), burnt umber, blue grey,burnt sienna, primrose yellow, gold, deep cadmium, middle chrome and flesh pink (derwent).

By doing the pencil and color sketch, I start to get a feel for the painting outcome and a helpful guideline. Now the next step I will do the architecting of the painting; freehand transposing the sketch to the actual painting size and setting up a composition grid to make sure the painting objects are balanced. This way I can be sure to create a visual "flow" across the painting. So that will be the subject for the next blog posting.